


Changes

by lindsey_grissom



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-30
Updated: 2011-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-15 05:50:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It takes him three days to realise something's different, then three more before he gives up wondering and just asks. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Changes

It takes him three days to realise something's different, then three more before he gives up wondering and just asks. She'll tell him, he thinks, because really, what else is she going to do? Keep him in suspense, make him guess? Of course she'll probably laugh, click her tongue and tell him he's hopeless, but she will tell him.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She says, her eyes bright and almost predatory. He sighs, turning away from her and going back to his office; she wants him to guess.

He isn't good at guessing, he's more a man of plans and not-always-rational thought. So he sets up a little surveillance, just in the office and maybe one or two cameras at her home; not enough that he's reaching the stages of stalking her, but just the amount she'll probably expect from him anyway.

He's pretty confident he'll solve the changes that way, but something in his gut tells him it's a little close to cheating and taking the easy way, so he thinks that there's no harm in trying to find out another way while he waits for her to drop her acts in front of the cameras.

He asks Parker first, in a moment of pure idiocy and some unfounded belief that women understand women. He forgets that Parker's not a normal woman and has to get quite creative to stop her from climbing through Sophie's window that night and stealing her diary. Still, as he leaves her office, sending a bemused glance towards the plant in pride of place, he thinks it's not a totally awful idea and he puts it on the back burner in his mind in case she decides to get rid of the cameras and he gets desperate.

Eliot laughs. A lot. Until, when glaring doesn't work, he just leaves the kitchen, the door staying stubbornly open and the low chuckles following behind him.

Hardison isn't any more help than the other three, although the cameras he provides have built in night vision. Slumped in a chair, he watches her switch off the light in her bedroom, slipping beneath the sheets. Her chest rises and falls steadily and even in the tinted colours, he knows the exact moment that she falls into sleep.

He falls asleep slumped over the table and narrowly avoids discovery when their entrances the next morning wake him suddenly. The control slips from his fingers and flies across the room in his haste, but even when he gets odd looks later, when they're all searching for it so they can work on their latest case, he's not sorry.

He takes to staring at her when she isn't looking. At first he does it on purpose, watching the way she walks, the sway of her hips and the tilt of her head when she's listening. Then he realises he's looking at her and glances at his watch to find that several minutes have passed and he hasn't noticed.

Eliot starts laughing again, some time on the third day after the challenge was laid down, and by the fifth day he takes to elbowing Hardison until they both collapse into laughter. Parker looks mildly confused until the sixth day and then it's simply a blessing that she isn't actually interested enough to start making comments.

By the end of the week he knows exactly what he's doing and how it's affecting the rest of the team, but he just can't stop looking at her. Because there is something different and he has to know. Besides, it's the first time everyone's gotten on when not on the job and that seems like a good enough reason to just carry right on.

By the second week, he notices that Sophie has noticed and still it doesn't stop him. Neither does she, she just quirks her lips and says nothing and that's certainly not 'stop'.

And it's one day, almost a week and a half after he first noticed, that he finally gets it. He's sprawled in his chair, glass in hand and she turns over in her sleep and the camera is angled just so that when she turns into the stream of moonlight, he can see the soft curve of her lips and the shadows her eyelashes make on her cheeks and he thinks; _I love her_ and then he thinks, _oh_ and everything suddenly makes a lot more sense.

 

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_End._   
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